By now you’ve probably heard that we’re taking over Father’s Day, transforming it into National GeekDad Day. On top of all the other things already going on for the day, we thought it would be fun to talk to some of our favorite people at one of our all-time favorite entertainment companies about what Father’s Day means to them. The great folks at Disney were, as usual, more than happy to oblige, coming through with some great interviews and quotes, in addition to a lot of good stuff about upcoming shows we can expect to see.

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First up is the new cartoon show Motorcity. We’ve really enjoyed this show since it premiered a few months ago, and the episode “Vendetta,” which premieres tonight at 9:30pm ET/PT on Disney XD, looks to be just as good as the preceding episodes. The show’s creator, Chris Prynoski, isn’t a dad yet, but he will be next month, so we think he’s entitled to celebrate. His plans show a sensibility that many GeekDads can subscribe to:

As a soon-to-be father, I can only hope my son will develop a taste for the finer aspects of geek culture. When he’s learning to crawl, I plan to place a Boba Fett and a Jar Jar figure on the carpet 12 feet in front of him and see which one he chooses;

From Motorcity: "Vendetta." Image: Disney

Another show we enjoy, and which I’ve written about a few times, is Fish Hooks. The show’s creator Noah Z. Jones is a geek dad, and had this to say for National GeekDad Day, which expresses a sentiment I think few dads could fail to understand:

My kids have had a giant impact on of Fish Hooks. I’m sure if I wasn’t as deliriously tired and sleep-deprived as I am, the show wouldn’t be nearly as crazy!

The new 24-hour Disney Junior channel is getting in on the Father’s Day action in a gentler way, by way of an epsiodes in their Quiet Is… series of shorts titled “Dad Reading.” The short will premiere on Disney Junior on Father’s Day, June 17, at 8:25pm ET/PT, but you can see a sneak preview of it below!

The series’ composers William V. Malpede and Rick Garcia told us about the inspiration they got from their fathers while growing up:

Malpede:

I remember, as a young boy, the adventure of cold, snowy, nighttime bear hunts in a Chicago suburb forest. Dad said I just might see a bear… and I still remember that adventure of imagination!

Garcia:

My dad was a cowboy and an artist, and told vivid and incredible stories through his artwork. I’ve had the opportunity to live out every single one of those stories in my imagination.

Marvel Universe on Disney XD is doing its part to make Father’s Day geeky by having a mini-marathon of Ultimate Spider-Man from 11:00am – 2:00pm ET/PT, leading off with a new episode titled “Freaky” which includes an appearance by Wolverine. Interspersed with the episodes will be installments of Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada’s Master Class, short bits in which he teaches his daughter and the audience how to draw various Marvel characters. Joe was kind enough to answer some questions about fatherhood’s effect on his work and what Father’s Day means to him — my thanks to Cecelia Nguyen at Disney for asking the questions for me, and for asking one of her own, as unfortunately Joe’s schedule and mine had no free time in common. Enjoy the interview below, and keep reading for more Disney awesomeness:

Joe and Carlie Quesada. Photo: Disney XD/Lou Rocco

GeekDad:How do you think being a father affects the way you approach your work?

Joe Quesada: Well, one of the ways it’s really affected my work is when my daughter watches me draw, she sometimes looks on in amazement and sometimes looks on in frustration, because she’s eleven years old, and I’ve been drawing my entire life right now – many decades more than she has. So she gets frustrated because she can’t draw exactly the same way I can at her age. So it’s really taught me, when describing and teaching kids or other artists my methodology of how I draw and how I go about things, to try to demystify the process and try to tell them that it’s OK. You know, as a kid I used to get frustrated, too, when I would watch professional artists working and I’d think that I wasn’t any good at it. So I try to let other people know that you all have to start at a beginner’s spot, and sometimes that’s frustrating when you see people who are really good at what they do, and they’ve been doing it for decades. So it’s definitely affected me in that manner.

GD: In what ways does your daughter inspire your work?

JQ: Well, obviously her youthful eyes. I see the things that she gets excited at, and it reminds of when I was that age, and those things used to get me excited. Obviously the things that get me excited today are something that a grown adult gets excited by, within the projects that I do. So she’s really helped me keep that childlike sensibility to my work, and allowed me to pay more attention to that, and to realize that there are many more kids her age looking at my work than adults looking at my work.

GD: What kinds of projects do you like working on with your daughter?

Joe and Carlie Quesada. Image: Disney XD/Lou Rocco

JQ:You know, I like it when she asks me, in particular, to help her – to teach her how to draw something. A few weeks ago we were working – she really wanted to learn how to draw buldings and shapes in perspective. So we were learning perspective, which is not easy – it’s a very tough thing to do. Once you learn it, you get the knack for it, it really makes your drawings come to life.

GD: Do you have any special plans for Father’s Day that you can share?

JQ: Yeah, actually, my daughter got me tickets to see my favorite play – which is supposed to be a surprise, but mom told me.

GD: You’re going to pretend to be surprised though, right?

JQ: Oh, absolutely. She was very happy, she got me tickets to a Broadway show: Jesus Christ Superstar.

GD: What’s your favorite Father’s Day memory?

JQ: Wow. I think my favorite Father’s Day memory was my first Father’s Day. My daughter wasn’t even a year old, and just being a father for the first time and celebrating the day. That’s always the best one. But, you know, every year it’s the hugs – that’s my favorite part.

Keep reading for info on my personal favorite Disney TV show, and how it’s doing the Time Warp again.

If you’re a regular reader of GeekDad, you’ve probably noticed that I’m a huge fan of Phineas and Ferb. What you probably didn’t know, since it’s never come up before in a way relevant to this blog, is that I’m a big fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. These two facts may seem to have nothing to do with one-another, unless you happen to know who provides the voice for Lawrence Fletcher, the dad on Phineas and Ferb: one Richard O’Brien, better known to Rocky Horror fans as the show’s writer and the actor who played Riff Raff.

As if it weren’t geekily awesome enough to have a Rocky Horror star do a voice on a Disney cartoon show, an upcoming episode of the show features the voice of Frank N. Furter himself, the one and only Tim Curry. Curry will voice an antique dealer rival of Lawrence’s, so Curry and O’Brien will have scenes together. The episode, titled “Tri-State Treasure: Boot of Secrets” will air as the second half of the half-hour show next Friday, June 22, at 9:00pm ET/PT on Disney Channel.

Swampy Marsh: We had an episode where Dad ostensibly runs into his antiquing nemesis, Worthington DuBois, and we thought “Who better to play Dad’s nemesis than Tim Curry?”

Dan Povenmire: As far as we know, and we haven’t actually checked this out but we’re going to throw it out there as though it’s fact, we think this is the first time they’ve been in a scene together since The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

GD: It probably is.

Dan: We can’t find anything else on IMDb.

Swampy: We can find nothing to refute that.

Dan: So we believe it to be true, whether it is or not. [laughs]

Swampy: The only sad thing was that we couldn’t get the two of them together in the same room to do the recordings, with Richard being over in the UK or in New Zealand, and Tim working here. But they crossed over at the end of a recordingg session I was doing with Tim, where Tim was leaving when we were hooking up with Richard, and we got to put them on the line together, and it was such a wonderfully sweet moment. There is such a great affection between these guys, and I was very grateful — and a little misty — just getting to hear that brief interaction. It was very sweet.

Dan: Richard was in town about two months ago, and he came into the studio with his family, and got a tour of the studio, and everyone treated him like royalty. But my favorite thing is that he was in my office, picked up my guitar, and played “The Time Warp” on it! And Swampy videotaped it. But I wasn’t in my office at the time! I was in the editing room, so I missed it.

GD: So, do you have anything else in the works that you can tell me about?

Dan: We’ve got an episode coming up where Doofenshmirtz and Perry get lost in the desert — they both get zapped to the middle of the desert, and the entire episode is them getting back to Danville. We only see a little bit of Phineas and Ferb at the very beginning and the very end.

Swampy: It’s a great buddy road trip movie, with Doof and Perry.

Dan: And of course Doofenshmirtz has to carry the majority of the conversation, which is bothersome to him and to Perry at certain points. It’s like our version of a buddy movie, and that’s one of my favorites that we’ve done. I mean, aside from having to work with that voice actor, who’s just a pain! [Note: Dan is the voice actor for Dr. Doofenshmirtz.]

GD: Anything you can tell me about the progress on the movie?

Dan: We’re finding out a bit more about it tomorrow. We’re getting a new draft — we have one of our writers off doing a new draft. We did an entirely new story, basically.

Swampy: We got some great input from some really talented people that we work with.

Dan: Yeah, because we were trying to push it in one direction, and the studio was sort of pushing back, and then we came up with something that we both love. So now it feels like we’re all making the same movie. It’s going to be very good. We’ll know more about it tomorrow.

GD: When is the release?

Dan: As far as we know it’s still 2013, but we’ll know more when we get this new draft.

Swampy: It’ll be easier to confirm everything once that’s final.

[…]

Dan: You know what I do for Father’s Day? I wake up in the morning, and they come in and give me a tie or something, and I’m like “Oh, it’s Father’s Day?!” [laughs] That’s about the most planning I end up doing for Father’s Day. I’m never sure when it’s coming. I’m lucky to remember Mother’s Day – that’s the way I feel. To me, Father’s Day is… Mother’s Day is about the moms, and Father’s day is about the kids. So get out there and do something fun with the kids – take them somewhere or build something, make something with them. That to me is the fun part about Father’s Day.

Swampy: You were saying that on Father’s Day, the kids spend time with the fathers. On Mother’s Day…

Dan & Swampy: …the kids spend time with the fathers, to give mom a break! [laughter]

Dan: Mother’s Day comes and I take the kids somewhere to give mom a spa day or something like that.

Swampy: My wife always asks me what I want for Father’s Day, and the only thing I say is that I just want to go surfing with my son. Like, if I can do that without any trouble or worry about anything else for the day, I’m happy.

We also discussed a few other things that fans of the show would be interested in hearing about: In conjunction with an episode of the show later this summer, there will be a special version of the popular Where’s My Water? game app called Where’s Perry?, which will according to Dan and Swampy be more than just a re-skin of the original. They also told me about the recently-announced attraction at Epcot at Walt Disney World called “Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure,” which sounds like one heck of a lot of fun, even for adults.

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